Scarcely was this great public calamity past, for it could be
reckoned no less, when one Saturday afternoon, as Miss Sabrina, the
schoolmistress, was dining with Lady Macadam, her ladyship was
stricken with the paralytics, and her face so thrown in the course
of a few minutes, that Miss Sabrina came flying to the manse for the
help and advice of Mrs Balwhidder. A doctor was gotten with all
speed by express; but her ladyship was smitten beyond the reach of
medicine. She lived, however, some time after; but oh! she was such
an object, that it was a grief to see her. She could only mutter
when she tried to speak, and was as helpless as a baby. Though she
never liked me, nor could I say there was many things in her
demeanour that pleased me; yet she was a free-handed woman to the
needful, and when she died she was more missed than it was thought
she could have been.

Shortly after her funeral, which was managed by a gentleman sent
from her friends in Edinburgh, that I wrote to about her condition,
the Major, her son, with his lady, Kate Malcolm, and two pretty
bairns, came and stayed in her house for a time, and they were a
great happiness to us all, both in the way of drinking tea, and
sometimes taking a bit of dinner, their only mother now, the worthy
and pious Mrs Malcolm, being regularly of the company.

Before the end of the year, I should mention, that the fortune of
Mrs Malcolm's family got another shove upwards, by the promotion of
her second son, Robert Malcolm, who, being grown an expert and
careful mariner, was made captain of a grand ship, whereof Provost
Maitland of Glasgow, that was kind to his mother in her distresses,
was the owner. But that douce lad Willie, her youngest son, who was